Speak Out, Speak Loudly, Speak Often: An Underreacting Public is a Perpetrator's Best Friend

I recently finished Michelle Knight's Finding Me, a disturbing recount of her 11 year captivity at the hands of sexual sadist Ariel Castro. Michelle's story made me reflect, deeply, on violence, depravity, and how it is that so much monstrousness plays out before our very eyes.
I meant to write a book review when I was finished with Michelle's story. Instead I ended up with a great deal of heartsick disappointment and rage pouring out of my pen and embodying a scathing social commentary. Here are my thoughts:

There is so much to learn from this tragedy.

First, and maybe most important, we can learn what Violent Risk Assessment analysts tell us (and chastise us for) already: that the number one reason why violence is so prevalent is because average people underreact to warning signs and worrisome behaviors of those who eventually act out violently. And by underreact, what the experts mean is that we essentially do nothing. And they are right. We see things that are hinky, but we excuse these oddities away. Or we’re out-and-out confronted by an incident or behavior, yet we choose not to believe that our brother, cousin, friend, or son could possibly be dangerous or destructive—sometimes denying it to the point where we get so defensive and angry we victim-blame, and re-write the event to paint the victim as the villain. Sound crazy? It is, yet what is even nuttier is when we are not personally connected to the threat-maker / law-breaker in any way and yet we still do nothing and instead offer a haughty, disaffected little shrug. Say asinine things like “Boys will be boys” to what too often (and tragically) turn out to be outrageously obvious precursors to depravity and/or violence.

Why do we do this?

A few reasons. First, and most obvious, we ignore red flags because we are desensitized to violence. I recall once having a conversation with a literary agent who told me that a fiction novel damn sure better have something more compelling than a mere murder because “people don’t care about dead bodies.” He was sadly, and maybe even shockingly, correct. We’re saturated with violence from every vantage point we seek. So much that it has to be over the top before we do much more than blink.

But our indifference wells from a place even more insidious than desensitization. There’s a toughness associated with the unflappable or disaffected and so we seek to adopt that persona ourselves. No one wants to look like Chicken Little, and people are embarrassed to even think they may appear hysterical. So what do they do when they see things that are glaringly disturbing? Well, internally, they are alarmed. It is highly likely that they are even deeply troubled. But externally?  Here, they shrug. They write it off. They reframe the incident or incidences into something more mutable and palatable because the fact of the matter is this: they don’t want to be the one who is seen as pushing the ‘panic button’. They don’t want to tattle. There is a responsibility and a label that goes with being the whistle-blower and the grim reality is that we, as a culture, do tend to persecute the reporter more than we hang the perpetrator, and so no one wants to be ‘that guy’. Therefore we shut up, and internally hope, fervently, that both what we are seeing and our instincts are wrong.

Beyond that, and most obviously, we turn a blind eye because we don’t want to believe what our eyes and guts are telling us, and we certainly don’t want to get involved. Violence and depravity are ugly and unnerving and besides—isn’t it more helpful to focus on the positive instead of dwelling on the negative? Isn’t that what all the self-help gurus are saying these days? And they must be right. ’Cause people are generally more good than evil, aren’t they? Well, aren’t they? Please….?

Usually. But not always. ’Cause here’s the other thing we need to learn from this tragedy: monsters are real. Oh, sorry—does that sound too hysterical? Okay. Try this: people can be monstrous. And what’s more, monstrous things know no geographical limitations. Atrocities can happen anywhere—in Michelle’s case, the monstrosity happened right next door to a good man who (hallelujah!) finally said something.   

We too need to start saying something. We need to pay attention. When we are confronted with incidents that we have to explain away, here’s a crazy thought: let’s not explain it away. Let’s take it at face value (even though it might hurt) and consider what we really might be dealing with. Also, when something’s off kilter, when your spidey-sense tingles, when your gut makes that queasy pitch….you need to talk about it. You need to tell someone. Your silence could kill someone, and isn’t that a hell of a lot worse than maybe (just maybe) being a Chicken Little? And here’s a prediction: When you do decide to confide in someone, share the things you’ve seen that are hinky? You will be shocked at how relieved the person you disclose to is to also share that they feel the same way (and might even know more pieces to the puzzle than you). From there, don’t stop talking. Tell authorities. Keep telling authorities until somebody listens because, sadly, law enforcement are disaffected too and they fall into the same wells as we do in terms of underreacting.

Yet how many people may still be embracing their lives on this planet if someone had not been afraid of overreacting?

Let me tell you a story: in my community we once had a quasi-homeless woman who would float between here, Edmonton, and Vancouver in an unholy trinity of sex-trade locales. Her timelines for each region were loose, but reasonably predictable….until at one point she just stopped showing up. At all. Months passed. She didn’t surface. People noticed, but, like Michelle’s absence in Finding Me, no one cared that she was gone. I daresay some were even relieved. But then was found dead, a murder that had occurred right under their noses and  “How could that be?!” they cried.

Seriously? Why couldn’t it happen here? Why couldn’t it happen anywhere? How, in our quest to look worldly and disaffected, can we instead look only colossally naïve?

And how can we be so heartless?  A few paragraphs prior, I made mention of victim-blaming. In Michelle’s recount of her ordeal, victim-blaming was a theme underscoring her entire story. Because of where Michelle came from and what Michelle was, no one looked real hard—or at all—when she vanished. Why? Because her absence and presumed-dead status had to be a result of her own shitty life and choices, hadn’t it?

I need to be careful not to get into rant-overload mode here, but….if there is one things that grinds every one of my gears, it is victim blaming. So let me make this abundantly, crystal, unmistakably clear: when someone is the victim of rape, murder, kidnapping, vandalism, or verbal abuse, and the crime they have endured is NOT the result of another party’s self-defense, then IT DOES NOT FUCKING WELL MATTER where they came from, if they have a home, if they are male, female, gay, straight, trans, or asexual, how they were dressed (or not dressed), what god they worship, what hue their skin might be, what they do for a living OR ANY COMBINATION THEREOF. When someone is violently attacked in any manner, ESPECIALLY when there is a power differential placing the perpetrator at a physical, financial, psychological, or emotional advantage over the victim, then it is never—EVER—the victim’s fault, and we should ALWAYS take the side of the oppressed and not the oppressor.

Always.

Without fail.

And we need to be both vocal and vigilant in doing so, and we need to shame those who are not.

We clear there? Victim-blaming casts you in the same lot as the perp. And yes, that includes victim-blaming over the little things too. So please consider that the next time the phrase ‘Boys will be boys’ falls out of your mouth. Know that you are a total asshat for saying such a stupid thing.

Moving on: Michelle’s history and home life (if we can even call it that) was nightmarish. Transient, impoverished, and neglected, she was also sexually abused from the time she was small, the effects of which remain so profound that her voice is stunted at the emotional age she was at when the molestation began (count, for example, how many times she refers to her body, in a way that is simultaneously childlike and dissociative as ‘my little body’). Michelle was, horrifically yet truthfully, ‘the perfect victim’: unloved, unsupervised, unnoticed and then….gone. Presumed dead. Unpursued. Because here is yet one more thing we need to learn, and we need to learn it well: Predators go where vulnerable people are. Perpetrators take full advantage of the aforementioned set of benefits which place them in a position which is psychologically, financially, physically, or emotionally superior to their victim because believe me, they are fully aware of the ‘weak links’ amongst them. As victimizers, that’s their job and they have honed their skills well. So even if we remain determined not to blow the whistle on their behaviors (which in retrospect of any crime are always glaring and many), then we had better start doing a far better job of looking after the most vulnerable among us. That means our homeless and disenfranchised. It means our children. And yes, sadly, it still means our women (and as a woman it pains me to note that, yet it is true; women remain far more likely to be victims of violence than men). Looking after our vulnerable also means we need to start holding those in their midst to a higher standard. Does that mean every coach, teacher, social worker, parent, church leader, and therapist is plotting some sort of secret perversion and violence? Of course not. What it does mean, though, is that perpetrators put themselves in positions of trust over victims—and that we might not like that, but we’d better accept it. And we’d better be prepared to do something about the breaches of trust we see when they happen.

Lastly, we need to learn to communicate with each other. This is direct reference to the admonishment to speak up from above, but it needs to be repeated, and repeated, and repeated until it is so ingrained in our psyche that it is second nature. Stop dismissing outrageousness. Stop thinking that just because you know someone, and because you think they’re a ‘good guy’ or a ‘good kid’ that they could not possibly do something heinous. In other words? Get over yourself. Currently, the community where I live has a group of professionals trying to ratify a Violent Threat Risk Assessment agreement which, in a nutshell, would allow all human services professionals to share information and make a help-plan about and for anyone who is exhibiting what’s known in the field of violence to be ‘worrisome behaviors’. The point of this initiative is twofold: first, and obviously, it is to protect the person or persons at whom any threat or violence is directed. Second, it is to intervene in the life of the threat maker, perhaps dismantle plans of violence and ascertain support and help for that individual.

Shockingly, there are people opposed to this plan. “It is intrusive!” cry some. “It seems like gossiping!” cluck the sanctimonious tongues of others. “It’s all hocus-pocus!” snort of the egos in the crowd, the cowboys who think they alone can swagger in and handle it all without consultation from others (especially meddlesome, pseudo-science head-shrinkers like *me*).

Wonder what Michelle Knight would think of someone shooting down the possibility of a team of professionals sharing information about the worrisome behaviors of one Ariel Castro? Wonder how she’d feel about having 11 years of her life back? Wonder how intact her psyche would be if she’d never been violently tortured and raped, over and over and over? Wonder if she would have cherished every moment she would have had with the beloved little boy she called ‘Huggy-Bear’, the child she never saw again after she was kidnapped and shackled for what would have felt like a lifetime?

I wonder how much every one of us could make a difference if we stopped accepting the outrageous and instead started being accountable for what we see, hear, gloss over, and cover up? I wonder how much violence and depravity we could stop in its tracks if we just got the hell over ourselves and SAID SOMETHING.  

Musings From The Launch Pad—Not All Life Lessons Hurt

5am and my youngest and I were up and ready to accompany my oldest into Edmonton for a first-peek, early check in at Grant MacEwan Residence. We felt excited and anxious and sad - sort of like a root beer float with a shot of cod liver oil in it. Life's a funny thing. Our greatest joys are served with garnish sprigs of grief and heartache. Every step forward is one more step away from what we know, what we love, and what we’re comfortable with. But that's growth, right? That's learning, and that's maturing even when you think you've already got there (secret: you're *never* 'old enough' and you never feel 'ready' for life's big transitions). Everyone else who's gone before you, and seemed like they had it all together - it was all just an illusion. They were every bit as scared and sad and full of wonder as you.

Yet…melancholy as it is, it’s also way too easy to stay stuck in the sorrow and sadness attached to this business of launching a child into the big, bad world—easy to drown in the tidal wave of apprehension and grief to the point where we forget that the world is not, as a matter of fact, big and bad at all. Not all the time, at any rate. Yesterday I learned (or, more accurately, was reminded) of something hugely important as I sat in my observer’s chair while a Residence RA delivered an orientation to my daughter:

The first year of post-secondary school is a freaking blast.

There is no year in your academic career that’s more exciting, exhilarating, and shiny-penny new as the first year in University. You’ve arrived! You’re free! You’re about to live amid new people, be surrounded by new geography, hear (and accept) new ideas, and learn about new career possibilities you had no clue even existed—especially if you’re from Smalltown, Anywhere and have lived (not necessarily by choice) a myopic and linear existence.

You are about to meet the people who will very likely be within your circle for the rest of your life.

You’re going to learn things—academic things, philosophical things, societal things—that will re-shape the very core of who you are and bring the person you really are right to the very surface of your skin.

And I for one cannot wait to meet the person my girl is going to become. This launch-thang, it is so not an ending—it is an exhilarating beginning. I am so very proud of her, yes, but more so, I am now incredibly, passionately thrilled for her.  

She’s thrilled too. And so, so ready for this transition. Yesterday, she took a look at the people milling about in the common area and, upon tallying the spectrum of skin colors (and the even broader spectrum of fashion), she beamed and said “Oh, thank God, Mom! Not everyone is white.” Amen. ’Cause Smalltown, Anywhere also tends to be depressingly monochromatic in terms of skin tone, a lack of cultural diversity that’s simultaneously limiting and stifling—and so far from representative of the (so-called) big, bad world that you gotta wonder if maybe it’s actually small towns that are, in fact, big and bad. Hmmmm.

The RA, a sparkle-eyed, big-grinned 3^rd-year with a dancing East Indian-splashed-with-Ontario accent asked what she is taking. “I want to go to med school,” she said. He replied: “Oh, no! I don’t want to work that hard! My sister is a doctor. All A’s. She had to have all A’s. I don’t want to work that hard,” he repeated and grinned so big I giggled (and kind of wanted to hug him). He’s got a split major: criminology and biology. “Forensics?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “I want to be a lawyer.”

“Thought you didn’t want to work that hard.”

Another shiny-big grin.

Mandeep’s enthusiasm was so infectious I forgot, completely, to feel sorry for myself or sad about my kid leaving home.

Cause holy hell, my kid is leaving home! She is about to embark on the adventure that will be her life. This is so freaking fantastic, how dare I make it all about me and my droopy old bottom lip?    

I should be ashamed of myself, and I am.

Her unit itself—four bedrooms, two bathrooms—is….well, I used the word ‘durable’ so as to keep myself from silently repeating ‘jail cell’, but when she saw it, she beamed again and said “My house! Oh, I love it!” and in that moment I immediately loved it too; the polished concrete floors became quirky and serviceable (“Nothin’ a pair of slippers can’t manage!”) and the plastic mattress on the double bed at once struck me as not reprehensibly institutional, but instead thoroughly practical; bed bugs don’t live on plastic, after all. And a trip to Jysk an hour later netted us a fine mattress pad to go with the memory foam (Oh, and a new duvet cover with an elegant pattern and matching coal black sheets didn’t hurt either).

I—more than she, even—bounced around like a brand new puppy next to the bulletin board full of first-week mixer activities: free breakfast one morning. Free hot dogs the next. A field trip to IKEA (Whaaaat?!) that made me dissolve into a fit of more giggles (why IKEA?), and a free appetizers & beer night that I hyperactively pointed out with a big ol’ open-mouth smile—only to earn a sour little moue of her mouth and rebuke: “Seriously, Mom? I’m not eighteen till October, remember?”

Right. That pesky legal-adult thing infringed on my first couple months of University way-back-when too. Sucks to be a fall baby sometimes.

I thought it sucked to be the Mom having to let go of her first born too. Wrong again. Oh, I’ll miss her. And I’ll shed more tears. In fact, I cannot say with any amount of certainty that I won’t go all swimmy-eyed and wobble-lipped this Sunday when we drop her off for good. But I no longer feel like I am plopping something into a casket every time I place a new item in the rubber-made totes that have become her ‘going away luggage’. Now there’s a little spring in my step and a grin playing with my face ’cause I am remembering what feeling sorry for myself made me forget: that, once upon a time, leaving my own small town and immersing myself in every facet of academic life was the best and brightest and most beautiful thing that ever happened to me. I was and have remained, all these years, so grateful for that experience. And I can’t wait for my girl to embrace it all. I can’t wait to watch her soar.   

To The Troops In The Trenches Of Every Government Office

A recent incident of violence in the government building where I have worked for twenty-one years pulls my pen to blog instead of to the query letter and synopsis I’m supposed to be crafting for my latest novel.

But some things are far too important to remain unsaid, and so….

This is an open letter of thanks to the many and varied public service government employees in my province of Alberta.

You, public servant, deal with an extraordinarily difficult, and yes, dangerous, segment of the population on a daily basis. And given that the majority of you are not law enforcement, you deal with this populace with no ‘back-up’ of weaponry (although there may be a panic button wired into your office somewhere). Instead you use your skills, your diplomacy, your common sense and self-preservation.

You perform your duties out of a sense of commitment, skill, and belief that in some small way you do make a difference. You do not do it for the exuberant wage you take home, and nor for the enviable perks—because as opposed to the public’s ill-informed illusion here’s a secret: you do not make an exuberant wage, and nor do you reap enviable perks. And here’s another secret: as a government employee you never will.

I’ll tell you what you do get, though:

You get berated by the public and told that you’ve made the wrong decisions. You’re told that you should have done this, or maybe should have tried that. You are second-guessed and harshly assessed by people who surmise the facts around the cases you work on because (and this one hurts) you can’t defend yourself with the truth—because it’s confidential.

You get spanked for daring to ‘flaunt’ your “book education” if you happen to have a few letters behind your name. How dare you try to act smarter than, better than, or more informed than the public you are charged to serve? Who, exactly, do you think you are?

You get chastised by the public who will tell you that since they pay taxes, they pay your wages! (The exclamation mark is there to connote the rabid assurance with which they will tell you this). These same folks either don’t realize or don’t care that you too pay taxes—and you may as well forget about them ever knowing your actual job description, much less what your true duties entail. Your job is damn well what they say it is—and that will be largely what they have learned from watching one-hour dramas on American TV. Nonetheless, you will be expected to execute your role as they see fit—not how your agency’s policies dictate you fulfill your duties and certainly not within the constraints of some pesky legislation. What’s the law, anyway? Just a lot of pretentious mumbo-jumbo—right?

Oh, and speaking of legislation, you get to work alone a great deal of the time despite labor laws erected that prohibit working by yourself. And why is this government legislation defied by the very government agency that is your employer? Well, that would be because your job is tough and turnover is high—so your agency is chronically understaffed. Also, people get sick, people take vacation, all of which they have earned and deserve. So the reality is that yes, sometimes you work alone—because here’s the other part the public demands yet really doesn’t understand: because you are a public servant operating as an agent of the government, you are an essential service—meaning you cannot just ‘close shop’ on the days you’re short-staffed. The taxpayer does indeed fund you, and so that means ‘on with the show’ even though you’ll be in the high-risk situation of working alone with our aforementioned difficult segment of  the population far more often than you should (which is never).

You get a lot of shit, government employee, and for anyone who might tell you that if you don’t like it you should ‘just quit’, I’d invite them to look at their livelihood and see if the same advice could be so easily and glibly taken.

Probably not.

Mortgages happen, bills happen, children happen, life happens, and so it’s not so easy to ‘just quit’ a rough job.

But when you work for the public, the public is not so understanding, compassionate, or forgiving as you, in your role, are both charged and demanded to be (by that same public who will use the services you provide for FREE at least once, likely more, in their lifetime).

So again, and in the face of all the derision, the berating, and the Monday-morning-quarterbacking from a public who believes they could do your job so much better than you (yet would never actually touch your job with the proverbial ten foot pole), I say THANK YOU, public service government employee. Thank you for your skill, your commitment, and your bravery. Thank you for your stoicism, your sense of humor, and your stiff upper lip in the face of the flack you endure.

Thank you for being my colleagues and thank you for being my friends. Thank you for teaching me what grace under pressure looks and feels like as I too perform my duties—as a public service government employee.

Peace to you all.

Born This Way, Born Any Way, You Deserve To Be Loved

So I read an article (link at the bottom) this morning and it really shook me. Maybe it’s because I am in the launch phase of parenting and so am acutely aware of how precious kids are, or maybe it’s ’cause it’s Sunday and spirituality is on my mind, or perhaps it’s because I am just thinking like a social worker—something I know I find tough to turn off, but….here’s the thing:



I have gay friends. I have friends who are the parents of gay children. BUT EVEN IF I DIDN’T I know what I know about brain development and how verbal abuse, shunning, and rejection impair the architecture of the developing human brain. A verbally abused child can, by virtue of his experiences, stay locked in fight-flight-freeze mode, thus unable to transcend into the brain’s potential for executive functioning, the area which allows one to learn how to regulate and self soothe. Sound like not such a big deal? Neuroscience mumbo-jumbo? Let’s play the tape all the way through:



As a result of this impairment, being stuck in fight-flight-freeze (due to abuse, let’s not forget that part) the brain, unable to soothe itself and re-regulate, will, nonetheless, still crave comfort.



So what happens?



Well, we’re crafty, we humans, and, as The Stones so eloquently said, when ‘you can’t always get what you want, if you try sometimes, you’ll get what you need’. So the person whose brain development is arrested in flight-fight-freeze, whose self-soothing ability has never been engaged, will still seek out and achieve comfort via alternate routes. Enter artificial nurture through the destructive practice of substance abuse, gambling, sex, shopping, eating, or any combination thereof. (Which, ironically, and tragically, the sanctimonious will then use as further ‘evidence’ of the homosexual’s treachery and debauchery, by the way—when really it is merely simple brain science).



Long story short? We are physically wounding the homosexual children we persecute. And no, I’m not speaking metaphorically. This can’t be dismissed by a curled lip and glib reply about sticks-and-stones or by saying that it would ‘Do the little pussy good to toughen up and get over it’.



Rejecting, shunning, denying, wounding and verbally abusing physically damages brain development. Please read that line again. And again. And again.



Now, having read it, having learned it, I invite you to imagine how we’d slash the number of addicts if we embraced—or better yet, discarded the notion of importance attached to—people’s sexual orientation.  Why do we even define each other by sexual orientation, anyway? And don’t get all Biblical on me ’cause I may be no divinity scholar but I certainly know that the Bible tells us to ‘Love One Another’ many, many, many more times than it makes any reference to homosexuality.   



Imagine now also how many fewer suicides our collective psyche would bear the burden of, how we could shrink the number of grieving, broken parents who could do nothing—NOT ONE THING—about their son or daughter’s orientation and others’ resulting viciousness regarding it, if only we just—oh, I dunno—“Loved One Another.”  How radical. How out-of-the-box.



Imagine kids laughing together and learning from each other and (call me crazy) protecting each other rather than feeling somehow justified—or perhaps even encouraged—to ridicule, persecute, and abuse.



Imagine. I implore you. Just imagine.



Because you know what I can’t imagine? I cannot imagine demonizing a human brother or sister for something they have had no more say in as to whether they were right handed or left handed. Or whether they had a penchant for sugar or a tongue for salt.



Similarly I cannot imagine that any of these self-righteous Scripture-spewing megaphones, these pulpit-pounders who encourage sanctions, shunning and, yes, abuse, are actually parents. These people who engage in rhetoric from the vile to the glib (God said ‘Adam & Eve’, not Adam & Steve’ heh heh heh)….do they not see that you have no more control over certain elements of your child’s bio/psycho/social make up than you do of pulling the tide in with your teeth? Have they not paid attention to their own children?



Apparently not.  



I am so sick of and sickened by the sanctimony. Of these people who do not see that their own cruel behavior is the very sin they revile as ‘unclean’.



A wise social worker I once worked for said: “Bonnie, intolerance of intolerance is, in fact, intolerance”. He was not wrong. But try as I might, I read the letter in the article attached, about this Mom listening to her 17 year old list the reasons why he wanted to commit suicide (ultimately because other people had a problem with him being gay) and I find it  impossible to tolerate any attitude that would bring a child to this brink. Any attitude that would create a childhood that was a landscape of Hell as opposed to one of love and fun and wonder.  



In this stiff-necked, sex-obsessed culture we’ve created, we physically hurt kids with the words we use to defend the indefensible. We misappropriate that which is Holy and Spiritual and turn it into weapons which physically damage the architecture of children’s brains.



We hurt these kids with the things we do and then we have the audacity to blame them for it.



We need to feel deeply, deeply ashamed of that. We need to Love One Another.



Here is the referenced article.



http://www.deepsouthdaily.com/2015/05/i-am-the-mother-of-a-gay-son-and-ive-taken-enough-from-you-good-people.html

Don't Blink

Last night I blinked, and in front of me was a tangible symbol of an upcoming transition—my daughter’s Grad Invitations, lovely cards with proud mortarboards and tassles on a background of school colors, black and gold. The theme this year? Don’t Blink.

Good advice.

Don’t Blink, because you’ll take her face in your hands and see that it is an adult’s face, yet it is also the face of your baby who nursed, your toddler who banged her eye and blackened it learning to walk, your little girl on her first day of school, and your teenager who landed her first part in the school play.

Don’t Blink because you will be baffled—where did your little girl go? Where is she going? And what if she needs you and you are not there?


Don’t Blink—because then those tears floating in your eyes will fall, and she will see that parenting has cost you your heart, and she will know that even though she has an amazing landscape of endless opportunities in front of her, if you had the choice, you’d hit the rewind button instead and do it all again—starting way back when she was too tiny to even have a face, but was floating there in your womb.

Don’t Blink because time is ruthless and has flown by, even though you were sure the earth was standing still when that colicky baby just wouldn’t stop crying, and when it seemed like she would never be old enough to have the independence you lost when you became her parent and she needed you every minute of every day.

Don’t Blink. It hurts.

 Just yesterday—which was really six years ago—I wrote the following reflection after my then-little girl started Grade Six. I filed it away, unable to read it. I look at it now and it feels more like a forecast than what it was at the time; a lament about how fast they get big. A requiem, if you will, about Blinking. Here it is in its entirety. I called it

                                                                     First Mourning 

First Morning of Grade Six today and there were friends to see. Miss Rorke to re-connect with (she got engaged!). So much to do and hear and reintegrate yourself with…. I saw, clearly and for the first time, how Vanier School is your domain. My presence was superfluous.

Leaving, I looked at the ground instead of the sky.

You were so excited for this new year to start, to be back in your arena…you weren’t even aware I was there.

 A few tears fell as I drove away from school and I knew you’d be baffled if you saw me cry. But what you don’t know is that everyone of your firsts is also a last. Each milestone you conquer makes your life flash before my eyes. I see you enter Grade Six today yet I also see you walk into the high school. Graduate. Have that first heartbreak. That first move from home. University. An engagement, a marriage and ….and like today I will be superfluous. An observer.

Your innocence is slipping away like the petals of the flowers in this, our fall weather. Your face is losing ‘child’ and developing ‘character’. Your very countenance is already more woman than girl.

I carried you under my heart – wasn’t that just yesterday?—and here the world has kept turning while I thought it stood still.
I wonder how it happened.
I wonder if one day you, like me, will mourn all the firsts.
br, September, 2009

Now graduation is six weeks away and another First Morning is in the wind—this time to University in the city, hours away from home. The time I’ve had with my girl over these past seventeen, magnificent years has been the greatest joy of my life. Simultaneously, time has also been my greatest punishment: for in retrospect I’m breathless at how fast it all really flies—far, far quicker than all those minutes it took to rewind The Lion King umpteen times in a day for my toddler. Far quicker than it took her to learn how to speak with clear diction and no longer need help from the speech pathologist. Far quicker than the awkward years when girls could be mean and the body grew in weird ways that made her feel awkward and frumpy (even though she never was). Far quicker too than it took to plug through critical analysis of literary works she astonished me by hating (how did I have a science gal?!).

I have learned so much in this first stage of parenting, this pre-launch phase when even though she studied, worked, accomplished, and performed, she was still only mere footsteps from my side when she slept at night. I have learned what I can actually sum it up in a sentence—a Grad theme, if you will—and it is:

Don’t Blink

br ~ April 2015

Can You Dig It? I Knew That You Could

“Can you dig it?”

“I knew that you could.”

Those lines, delivered in a skit by the Canadian comedy duo, Wayne & Schuster, were the go-to response my sister and I would utter every time something shocked us or left us incredulous. “Can you dig it?” / “I knew that you could” was a lot more hilarious (and infinitely more polite) than saying “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” We said it all the time and, just two days ago, I had occasion to see something that dropped my jaw so fast and so hard that before I even knew it was out of my mouth I said: “Can you dig it?” “I knew that you could.”

Except I had to explain the joke to my daughter. My sister isn’t here.

In fact in just a couple weeks it will be a year since I watched her last breath gasp out of her small, ruined body. The magnitude of that experience still sometimes seizes my heart and when it does it’s like I need to push an internal re-set to remind me to keep moving.

I feel as if I have learned so much yet know so little since then. Such as:

I've learned that when you lose the person who could make you laugh even when your heart was breaking, you scrape your broken pieces up a different way.  It hurts more, though, and the first few times you don’t know how to do it. I’ve learned that you figure it out, but I still don’t know if I’ll ever like it. Probably not.

I’ve learned that when you lose someone with whom you shared a lifetime of inside jokes that those same zingers don’t make you laugh anymore. Instead when you think of those things you once said or the stuff you used to make fun of, you get a lump in your throat that’s not funny at all, so you quickly think of other things. And you don’t know if you’ll ever think of all your jokes and laugh again. Or even if you’ll want to.

You learn that when you lose someone you lose ALL of them—not just the parts of them that pissed you off, exasperated you, embarrassed you, or hurt you. You lose the person who was your court jester, your cheerleader, your confidant and your friend. Every role they ever played is gone forever and it is never, ever coming back. This feels enormous and you don’t know, some days, how it is that you can hurt so bad and not bleed when you think of forever and all that it means.

You learn that you think of them far more often than you ever did when they were living (how horribly ironic!)—and you don’t know if, where-ever or whatever they are now, they still think of you too.

You learn to say goodbye yet you do not know how to say goodbye.

You learn that people lose patience with how sad you sometimes still feel. That even you lose patience with how sad you sometimes still feel—yet you don’t know how to feel differently because the sadness doesn’t seem to have a consistent agenda, and it often shows up with no warning and certainly no rsvp.   

You learn. And you don’t know. And you learn that you don’t know. The only thing of which you’re certain is that death hurts. And forever is a very long time.


So....

“Can you dig it?”

“I knew that you could.”  

Hatlen James & The Clapping Man - A Short Story

My second Chautauqua story in this spontaneous series is not, in fact, 'Chautauqua proper'. (Gasp!) Instead I've used the Red Brick School as a setting for another purpose it serves here in town - as home to the drama troupes that bestow all us lucky locals with live theatre.

Now, two disclaimers need to precede this tale. First, all business names used herein, and the former name of the town itself, are bona-fide Edson, Alberta history. What may not be historical is the chronology I've used in this story. I don't know, for example, if Maurice & Schwartz Grocers existed when The Red Brick School did. Ditto the Idyl Theatre. For these I've employed my unapologetic creative license.  For fun, though, I've included a couple photos to ground non-locals (and maybe even some real locals) as to where all the action is taking place. Second, this story makes reference to a play that really was executed by one of the local theatre troupes in town; a couple years ago, Oliver Twist enjoyed a marvelous run, and I remember watching it and wondering...if a little spirit from the Red Brick's school days really did haunt the place, what would he think when he saw that all the children on stage were dressed just like him....?  Beyond the real production of Dickens' tale, however, all 'cast and crew' within my tale are strictly inhabitants of the landscape of my imagination - and if you believe otherwise as you read it, then that is most certainly your imagination, working overdrive.

So with all that being said, please now allow me to introduce you to Hatlen James & The Clapping Man..... 

    

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Hatlen James & The Clapping Man

I

 

The smell of dirt woke Hatlen James and he sniffed. This was not dirt like in Mama’s garden where the soil was crumbly and hot from the sunshine. This dirt—he sniffed—it smelled like the forest where he and Papa (and Michael John, when he wasn’t being contrary) sometimes gathered mushrooms. This smell was one Papa liked. One he always told Hatlen was LOAMY.

    Hatlen sniffed the loamy. Where had it come from? He was in bed beside Mama (wasn’t he?) and here nothing smelled LOAMY. Here smelled like sweat and coughs and sour chamber pot. Here smelled like the sick that got stronger and stronger after Span Itch In Flew Enza came to their house and Mama couldn’t get up out of bed anymore. Then Hatlen James could not get up either. But now….

    He sat. Opened his eyes. A frown folded his forehead. Their bed wasn’t here. And where was Mama? Since they’d been sick they were always side by side, faces so hot it felt like an egg from the chicken coop would sizzle on their cheeks if it was cracked there. Hatlen looked around, sniffing (LOAMY!), then looked down. “Oh!” He shrank up (how could he shrink up?). A little boy in smart clothes and wearing a handsome flat cap lay beneath him, in the loamy. “Hello,” Hatlen said, carefully.

    The little boy did not move. He had a sleeping face with closed eyes.

    “Hello?” Hatlen tried again, louder.

    The boy did not wake up and Hatlen James peered at him, shrinking up again when he saw— “Oh!”—black spores of moss, creeping across the boy’s forehead. Hatlen’s nose crinkled. That shouldn’t be there. He reached to brush the moss away.

    His hand passed right through the little boy. Hatlen blinked. “Why—,” he began but then the boy turned to bones and his smart clothes were all rotten, edges frayed and everywhere ate up with holes. Hatlen cried out and leapt up from the bones and the LOAMY. Was this some sort of mean trick Michael John was playing? Was his brother going to jump out from somewhere and yell ’FRAIDY CAT then laugh because Hatlen was crying? Hatlen scrambled away from the hole with the boy who’d turned into bones and ran, broom grass whipping through his britches, and tree roots bucking up out of the ground to startle his feet. He tripped once atop a place where the earth went to sponge, a rectangle-shaped dip that stole the speed from his shoes. He stopped at the edge of that rectangle, turned and looked back at the place where he’d come from.

    A small cross squatted back there, poking up through the long grass. Hatlen’s chest lurched. He knew what that was! A tombstone! This was a graveyard! “There’s haints here!” he cried and ran, legs sailing through the brambles and tall grass. He glanced back only once.

    The cross was still there and even though his breath was all ragged and tears tore at the back of his eyes, Hatlen wondered—why only one cross? He’d been here before (with Mama and Papa, holding both their hands) and there had been many. But now…just one marker stood and the grass all around it was much too long. Hatlen frowned. The preacher ought to look after the graveyard better than that. In fact if Mama saw this she’d cluck her tongue and say it was just DISRESPECTFUL.

    Mama. Where was she? Hatlen climbed a short embankment due south, the direction where home was. “Mama?” he called but the breeze, cottony with poplar fluff, must have grabbed his voice, because he could not hear himself call her. And probably she did not hear him, either.  He kept walking, and calling, and as the grass got shorter and was choked out by gravel, his feet met a strange road; rocks all stuck together as if Mama’s hot, heavy iron had melted them flat. Hatlen  puzzled down at that road. A bright yellow stripe ran down its centre, soldier straight and spooling out as far east—and as far west—as he could see. Hatlen peered at it so long that if Mama was there she’d tell him to stop GAWPING. But he couldn’t. What was that line? What was it made of? His gaze tracked east, tracked west, and there was not a wagon in sight and no horses either, so he ran to that yellow line, poked a toe on it. It did not move! Carefully, Hatlen placed a foot on it. Then the other. The line was bright and a little bit sparkly and, giggling, he began stepping, heel-toe, heel-toe, balancing on that straight, yellow line.

    A rumble reached his ears from behind but Hatlen ignored it, tongue poking out between his teeth and arms out like birdwings, balancing on the line.

    The rumble grew and the air changed, seemed to rush from behind. Hatlen pulled his gaze off the line, looked over his shoulder. A scream made a frozen croak in his mouth. A machine, big and roaring, was blasting toward him. “Mama! Help!” He clenched his eyes tightly shut, then—

    A whoosh and rumble made his bones shake, teeth jitter. He opened his eyes and his feet had skittered off the yellow line and the machine—east, now—was getting smaller and smaller. Hatlen stared. What was that thing? It roared right through him. Was it magic? He scratched his head, flat cap bobbing up and down with the movement. Maybe magic. Papa told him bedtime stories about magic sometimes, even when Mama made tsks and told him not to FILL HATLEN JAMES’ HEAD WITH FANCIFUL YARNS.

    Papa didn’t listen and Hatlen was glad. He liked FANCIFUL YARNS very much.

    But that machine was real magic and it sure didn’t feel fanciful, so Hatlen bolted off the road with the funny yellow line, scampered down its southern embankment. Due south, he knew, was Heatherwood where he lived, and it might not be as fun to trudge through the trees as it was to balance on that yellow line, but at least here his feet knew the broom grass and foxtails and bright purple fireweed. Knew the prickly rose bushes with pink flowers cuddled up against their mean thorns—yet still sending sweet smell into the air (that wasn’t LOAMY). Hatlen shuddered, kept walking, and mostly the grass and the brambles passed through him, (which was puzzling), but occasionally a spruce bough would poke his ear, or he’d feel long grass brush his pant legs. Hatlen knew where to go.

    Or he thought he knew where to go.

    Through the woods due south was Heatherwood, except…Hatlen stopped at a place where the tree line stopped and the grass became short. He could feel his face gawping like before. This wasn’t Heatherwood! He didn’t know what this was. He’d never seen buildings like this. Were they houses? They did not look like the log cabin where Mama and Papa and Michael John must be waiting for him, wondering where on earth he’d got off to. Gingerly, Hatlen crept past the buildings, eyes feeling as big as they were. Not one had a garden out front with tidy rows of potatoes and radishes and posies on the end ‘just because’. None had a stone chimney climbing up its side, smoke coming out the top that said it would be snuggly-warm on the inside. Hatlen felt tears jab his eyes and he ran from these houses that looked nothing like home. Due south. That’s where the rail station was and everything else familiar. He wouldn’t be lost anymore if he just stayed due south.    

    Hatlen ran until a new structure knocked the cry-baby feeling right out of his eyes. Four tall poles, poked into the earth just like chair legs. He got near them and saw they were fashioned out of the same dull silver stuff that the buckets Papa used to slop the hogs were made from. Hatlen followed the path they stretched into, high up in the sky. “Oh!” Atop the poles perched a great, galvanized tub, black letters hugging its belly. E-D-S-O-N. Hatlen sounded this out very quiet, tongue wrapping ’round the sound each letter made. “Edson,” he said, and thought that sounded like a name, but not Heatherwood. He did not know how to spell Heatherwood, but he knew it started with an H, just like Hatlen. “Where am I?” he whispered, and at last a fat tear jiggled out of his eye. Then another. And another, snots now joining his crying and making him FRET. He had no hankie for snots, and Mama must have made him wear his good clothes for something. He crouched, pulled some soft grass, wiped the snots best he could with what he folded into a velvety patch. Rising, and chomping his bottom lip to stop its wobbling, Hatlen blinked back his crying.

    Then he saw it.

    The corner of a building (that is MORTAR those are BRICKS) was visible in the near distance, just beyond a smatter of tall, leafed-out poplars. Hatlen’s knees went all wiggly just like the time he thought he’d lost the bay mare after forgetting to tie her—but then found her grazing ’round back. “School!” he cried, laughing and ready to run again even though his legs were tired from running so much already, and now also all springy from seeing something he knew.

 

    It took him no time to get there, and when he reached the steep cement steps leading up into the red brick building, he barely noticed that he didn’t open the door and instead just passed through it. “School!” he said again, and more crying was coming out of his eyes, but this time it made him feel sort of happy. Except….Hatlen’s shoulders dropped. Was this school? It looked different. Like the classroom door waiting just up the stairs behind the big outside doors. It was way bigger. And the smell in here—Hatlen sniffed. There was no ink and no wood smoke.

    But no LOAMY either. That was a good thing.

    Hatlen stood soldier-still in the foyer and he looked all around. Then a gasp fell out of his face, so big he had to use both hands to catch it. There, over the new, bigger classroom door was a word he knew very well. One he could even make himself when he practiced with Mama, letters that Michael John said looked like a bunch of sticks shoved together but, when he was finished, still said

H A t L e N

just like this said, except these letters—

HATLEN

—were all tidy and the same size. And there was another word was lined up behind it, one Hatlen thought maybe he’d seen once on Main Street.

THEATRE

He cocked his head, tried sounding it out like he had with E-D-S-O-N. Nothing his tongue tried made any sense, still…‘HATLEN’.  That must mean he should be here.

    “Are you coming?” called a voice and Hatlen felt his mouth go very round. That voice came from behind the door that said ‘HATLEN’. Was someone calling him? He inch-wormed closer, hand shaking when he reached for the door handle. Swipe! Swipe! His fingers sailed through it. He stepped closer, reached again and “Oh!” he passed through the door and stood there, thinking. First the machine. Then the broom grass. Now a door. Hatlen chewed his bottom lip. Maybe those things weren’t magic. Maybe he was.

    Uh-oh. Had his magic made Mama disappear?

    His chest sank right down to his shoes but then “Are you coming?” repeated the voice and Hatlen searched for where it had come from. An embankment of seats were all cued up in rows. Before them was a stage. Hey! He had been to a place like this before. Idyl Theatre, on Main Street. Wait. He pictured the letters. THEATRE! Now he knew what this was! (he just couldn’t quite cipher why it was here, in his school)

    The person who had called spoke again and when Hatlen’s eyes located her his chest burst with so much happy that his feet lifted right up off the floor. “Mama!” he cried. She had a long wall of hair Papa called strawberry blonde and a dress scattered with bright, happy posies, hem sweeping the floor. “Mama!” he called again.

    She whirled.

    “Oh!” Hatlen stumbled back, an instant, empty feeling yawning in his tummy. This was not Mama.

   “Who’s there?” asked the lady with Mama’s strawberry hair. “Who said that?”

    “Who said what?” A man in trousers and a wool tunic Mama would say had SEEN BETTER DAYS bounded out from behind a black curtain.

    The strawberry lady turned to face him. “Someone just said Mama.”

    The man blinked.

    “Rayden, are the students here?” The lady, who Hatlen decided to call Strawberries, looked a little worried. A little scared. Hatlen saw this, but what she had said—students? Those were also called pupils. And he was a pupil. He waved—“I’m here!”— but Strawberries did not see him. Her face was too worried. Too scared. Hatlen sure knew that feeling. His arm fell back down to his side.

    The man beside Strawberries said “No kids yet. You sure it wasn’t your imagination? Or…” The toe of one of his shoes moved back-and-forth, back-and-forth on the floor. “Maybe it’s your nerves. You are pregnant, Edie.”

    Strawberries’ eyes went round like Mama’s had that time she found a rat in the flour bin. “H-how did you know?”

    The man’s smile was lopsided, but not unkind. “I’m not blind. And I am your best friend.”

    Strawberries face looked like it might cry and Hatlen wished again that he had his hankie. If he did he’d be a GENTLEMAN and let her use it. “It was a mistake,” Strawberries was telling the man softly. “But this baby—” She opened a hand over her belly and Hatlen saw that it was round beneath her baggy Mama-dress. “—this baby is no mistake.”

    The man in the tunic THAT HAD SEEN BETTER DAYS smiled. “No kid ever is,” he told her and the way he said it, Hatlen felt something in his chest. Something warm. Something that made him want to go give the man hugs.

    He didn’t. Instead he moved up to the top row, tucked himself snug in a corner right at the back. Below him Strawberries set chairs and tables around on the stage. The man placed large lanterns on the floor and aimed them up so they shone upon the things Strawberries arranged.

    Hatlen’s eyes became big. Now that was a trick. No lantern he’d ever seen could do that. He watched, knowing his face was what Mama would call AGOG, and then a great deal of noise pulled his eyes from the stage to the entrance.   

    Pupils! They spilled inside, not single file and quiet like he had learned how, but instead all higgledy-piggeldy, laughing and wearing bright colors as they poured down the stairs and up onto the stage. Hatlen felt like a grin stretch his face very big. “Hello!” he called, waving an arm. “Hello! Hello!”

    The pupils did not wave back. Instead they waved to the man.

    And the man waved too, also smiling real big. Then he did something that amazed Hatlen. He clapped his hands and when he did every single pupil stopped talking and froze right into place. “Ready?” the man said then, and music from a box at his feet suddenly filled the theatre with strange sounds that made Hatlen want to both listen and paste his hands on his ears.

    Then The Clapping Man started to jig.

    And so did all the pupils.

    Hatlen’s hands slipped down from his ears and “Hey!” he called, feet tapping to the strange music. “I can jig!” He slid out of the back row, hurried down the stairs. “My Papa plays the mouth organ! I know how to jig!” He fell into step beside The Clapping Man, and jigged.

    Above, on the stage, a little girl in—what? Trousers?—pointed and giggled. Hatlen giggled too. What sort of pupils were these? Girls in britches (what would Mama say?) and everyone laughing. This new room in his school did not smell like wood smoke and inkwells, but jigging and giggles were way more fun than lessons and arithmetic, Hatlen knew that FOR A FACT, and so he jigged and jigged, and when The Clapping Man said “Okay, everyone. Warm up’s over, time to work” Hatlen was glad; his legs had ran and gone swimmy and jigged today. He collapsed on the floor at the foot of the stage.

    The little girl who’d giggled peeked over the edge. Waved at him again.

    Hatlen waved back but his eyes were too heavy to keep looking, and his mouth was too weak to make a grin.

II

When Hatlen woke Strawberries was wearing a new dress and the whole theatre smelled like something he knew. COFFEE. Papa had COFFEE in the mornings when a brand new ball of sun was in the sky and there was fresh, crisp air in the yard. Hatlen closed his eyes, pretended he was not in HATLEN THEATRE but instead home with Papa. But then “Good morning!” The Clapping Man’s merry voice made him blink and when Hatlen looked, he was standing right there.

    “Good morning!” he replied and hopped up, straightened his hat.

    The Clapping Man reached right through him, a feeling that made Hatlen jitter, and took a cup of paper from Strawberries. It was full of COFFEE.

    Strawberries said “Good morning” too but The Clapping Man did not notice the way that she smiled. And later, when The Clapping Man smiled at Strawberries the same way, she did not notice either.

    But Hatlen noticed. And Hatlen smiled too.

    After that, every morning was the same. COFFEE and Strawberries in a new dress, and The Clapping Man always in his wool tunic THAT HAD SEEN BETTER DAYS. And every day the Clapping Man aimed the lanterns and arranged what he called THE SET, while Strawberries sat before a splendid machine that did mending much quicker than Mama could sew with her hands, and she worked on COSTUMES.

    She also sang songs.

    In a clear, gentle voice Strawberries sang lullabies to the baby in her tummy and when she did, Hatlen would curl up close to her feet, listen and try not to get sleepy.

    Then the pupils would come and no one was sleepy. Laughing and jigging, the children danced with The Clapping Man and Hatlen did too, always trying to tug on The Clapping Man’s tunic. Some days The Clapping Man would seem like he felt something, but most days he did not, but by then it would not matter; Hatlen’s legs would be wore out from jigging, and while the pupils began PROJECTING THEIR VOICES on stage he would collapse in a heap by where Strawberries was sewing, watch what they were doing.

    By cracky (Papa would say), they were acting out a FANCIFUL YARN!

    Hatlen watched and listened to the pupils tell a story, frustrated when often The Clapping Man would make them go back and START FROM THE TOP. “But we’ve seen this part already!” he’d say, but no one ever heard him, and so sometimes he’d leave the spot where he was in a heap and he’d go exploring.

    Many things he discovered made him very PERPLEXED. Like the classrooms that were the same as they used to be—but had no desks or woodstoves anywhere. And the slates and inkwells. He found them, but they were tucked in a big glass case hanging outside the theatre.

    Also (and this was very curious indeed) there were no outhouses anywhere in the school yard. Hatlen checked one afternoon when the pupils were all on stage PROJECTING THIER VOICES. He slipped outside and ran over the grass, but…only a few poplar trees grew where the outhouses once were. Hatlen did not know what to think. Where were the pupils to go if they needed to wee? He returned to the school scratching his head, flat cap bopping up and down. In the theatre all the pupils were still PROJECTING THEIR VOICES, so he drifted down the stairs, peeked into all the rooms in the cellar.

     What strange chairs! White and shiny and with seats that were just big bowls of water, each also with a shiny silver toggle on the back. Hatlen peered at them, very CURIOUS, and his fingers could not help it—they reached for one toggle. Swipe! Swipe!

    WHOOSH!

    Hatlen leapt back as the water in the bowl jumped and gurgled and whirled like a top. He covered his ears. The bowl chairs were noisy! He inch-wormed back toward them only when the one he had touched became quiet, then peeked. The water was still spinning but slower, then it stopped and became flat and still. Hatlen watched the clear, still surface of the water a long time, then—swipe! swipe! WHOOSH!—the water whirled again, spitting and spinning in a jig. Hatlen laughed and spun around like the water. This was a good game! He swipe, swipe WHOOSHED! again and again, and somewhere in the school he heard Strawberries say “Ray? The toilet keeps flushing by itself” but he did not pay any attention. Swipe, swipe, WHOOSH! was fun and he did it again and again until the pupils all thundered down to the cellar, bringing a smell along with them. Hatlen’s belly yowled. Whatever it was smelled yum! He drifted over to where they sat (boys and girls mixed up together!) at a long table with chairs on both sides.

    In the middle were flat boxes, each with a round pie in the centre, colorful and lumpy and smelling like baking bread. “Peets-ah!” said the little girl who waved to him every day, and Hatlen inch-wormed near. An empty chair was between them and she patted it. “Sit,” she whispered.

    Hatlen sat, his hind end hitting the chair and not going right through and falling onto the floor.

    “This is for you.” The girl put a slice of the bread-pie on a plate, pushed it toward him.

    Hatlen’s tummy said GROWWWL! and “Meta!” said one of the pupils, face all frowny.

    Meta giggled and put a hand on the waist of her trousers as if her belly had growled. Then “Go on” she told him, just the side of her mouth working. “Try it. It’s peets-ah.”

    Hatlen’s fingers tripped up close to the peets-ah—swipe! swipe!—then picked it up, lifted it to his mouth. It smelled so yummy. Chomp!  “Oww!” he cried.

    Several pupils stared over at Meta. She did not pay them mind. “You have to blow it,” she whispered. “It’s hot.”

    It sure was. The roof of Hatlen’s mouth felt like a big blister.

    “Watch,” Meta said, and blew little puffs on her own peets-ah. Hatlen did too but no breath came out of his body, and before long his belly just could not wait anymore so chomp! Oh, yummy. And not so hot anymore. He chewed. Swallowed. This was the best bread he’d ever had! Hot and gooey and looked kind of yuck, but good. He chomped and chomped until “Oof!”

    The Clapping Man plopped down right on top of him.

    “How come you got two plates on the go there, Meta?” he asked.

    Meta shrugged.

    The Clapping Man did too. It was always okay with him when the pupils did things that were silly or things they could not explain. It made Hatlen want to hug him again so he did, arms reaching ’round him and wrapping him close, squeezing him tight.

    The Clapping Man shivered. “Chilly in here today,” he remarked.

    Meta wore a small smile.

    “Or maybe I just need to buy a new sweater.” He plucked the front of his wool tunic THAT HAD SEEN BETTER DAYS.

    “No.” Hatlen kept his arms around The Clapping Man, placed his cheek against his back. “I like your SWEATER.”  

    Meta said “Or maybe just leave your sweater here at night before you go home.” She took another small bite of peets-ah. “That way you’ll always know it’s here on the days you feel cold.” She smiled at Hatlen.

    “Thank you,” he whispered.

    “Good advice,” The Clapping Man said.

    “You’re welcome.” Meta chewed the rest of her peets-ah and The Clapping Man laughed then got up, chattered with a few more of the pupils, then—

    “Okay, troupe!” he said. “Time to get back at it.”

    Hatlen followed them upstairs, stood close to The Clapping Man in front of the stage.  

    “Running lines,” The Clapping Man said.

    All the children groaned and Strawberries, perched in front of her sewing machine said, quietly, “They need a break, Ray.”

    A BREAK was a rest. Hatlen agreed. The pupils had PROJECTED THEIR VOICES a lot today. The whole time he had swipe, swipe WHOOSHED! with the water-bowl chairs, in fact.

    “But they just had pizza!” The Clapping Man said.

    Strawberries fixed him with a look Hatlen knew. Mama wore that look when she’d HAD ENOUGH.

    The Clapping Man sighed. “Okay, everyone. Try this.” He stooped, flicked on the box that played music.

    Jigging! Oh, hooray! Hatlen hopped up, joined The Clapping Man. And as all of them jigged, Hatlen tried like always to pull on the old, raggy sweater THAT HAD SEEN BETTER DAYS. Swipe! His hand passed right through the hole at its hem.

    Swipe! Another pass. He tried again.

    TUG!

    The Clapping Man froze then whirled, so fast that Hatlen James felt the air whoosh, lift his hat. He clamped it on with both hands, trembling as The Clapping Man looked right at him. “Hello!” he fixed on his happiest smile. “I am jigging with you! Do you see me? Did you feel me hug when there was peets-ah?”

    The Clapping Man peered and peered, but Hatlen James could not tell if he was looking at him, or through him. So he made his voice louder. “I like when you smile at the pupils,” he said. “And I like when you sneak smiles at Strawberries.” Hatlen stared at him, concentrating so much that he trembled. “You make me think of my Papa. I loved my Papa.”  He swallowed hard. “And I love you too, Clapping Man.”

    The Clapping Man kept staring like he could not stop, then reached out, moved his hand back and forth. It passed through Hatlen’s neck, stealing his voice and making his throat feel like it was full of warm, swarming honeybees. “A spirit,” Clapping Man whispered, but Hatlen did not know what that meant. Still, the way The Clapping Man smiled…something shone inside Hatlen’s tummy, something that made him feel like he always did on the nights before Christmas, when he knew he’d wake up to find lots of hard, shiny candies in the sock he’d hung up by the fire.

    “Rayden?” Strawberries placed a hand on his arm. “You okay?”

    Hatlen rushed to her. Would she see him? He pat, pat, PATTED! her tummy.

    “Oh!” She flinched and The Clapping Man grasped her elbow. “It’s okay,” she said, but looked PERPLEXED. “Sometimes the baby does the tango in my belly.”

    “But that wasn’t Baby jigging! It was me! Please look at me!” Big crybaby tears wobbled from Hatlen’s eyes so he whirled, fleeing just in case Strawberries and The Clapping Man really would see him, and in his back row in the corner he crouched, hid his crying.

    But through the crack between the seats he watched them. The Clapping Man’s face was fixed in A THOUGHTFUL MANNER and he looked, for the longest time, at the place where Hatlen had been.

III

Night came and as the pupils all trickled out the front door Hatlen did not come out of his spot to tell them goodbye like always. Instead he tucked himself up, small as could be, face wet and tired from all his crybaby tears. “Goodbye,” he whispered as he heard one set of feet after another clop out of the school. “Goodbye. Goodbye.” Fat tears still stubbornly trickled off his cheeks. If they could all see him would they still leave him alone? In the dark that was scary and quiet in the theatre without all their happy noise? Hatlen choked on a gurgly sob—then heard another sob, down below.

    He sprang up.

    Strawberries. Most evenings The Clapping Man was last out the door, but tonight it was her, moving slowly as if something hurt, one hand spread wide on the side of her belly. Hatlen swiped his snots with a sleeve, peeked at her from over the seats in the back row.

    Her feet trudged slowly around her sewing machine as she tucked things away, and sometimes she’d stop, make a gasp and hold her tummy, wet tears on her face just like his. Hatlen hurried down to stand close, but did not know what to do. “Strawberries?” He tried to pull on her sleeve. “Is Baby doing THE TANGO IN YOUR TUMMY?”

    She gasped and dropped to her knees, her cry splitting the silence the same way the curtains split the stage when they flew apart. Hatlen hurried near, but “It’s nothing,” Strawberries panted, and he could tell she spoke to herself, not to him. “That thing on the ultrasound was just a shadow,” she muttered, rubbing her belly. “There’s nothing wrong with you.” She pushed herself to her feet. “Baby,” she whispered. “We’ll be fine, baby.”

    A grip seized Hatlen’s tummy. “We’ll be fine, Baby.” Mama had said that to him when they’d laid in bed staring at each other, bodies hurting and faces sizzling from Span Itch In Flew Enza.

     And they had not been fine at all.

IV

Morning arrived and Hatlen did not skip alongside The Clapping Man like he usually did. Instead he drifted near Strawberries, peering at her. Her face was the color of a winter sky and when she tried to sing lullabies her voice was so quiet he could not quite hear all the words. “That’s fine,” he said and stayed near her spot at the foot of the stage, her sewing machine whirring and stopping in a rhythm that soon made him drowsy. When the door at the top of the stairs opened, stabbing a spear of light on the floor, he jumped.  So did Strawberries. “Principal King,” she said.

    A lady came down the stairs but she looked more like a crow; hair black like wings and eyes the same BEADY, hard and mean. FORBIDDING. That was a word Mama used and Hatlen did not know what it meant, but he sure knew how it made him feel: like a door had slammed shut, leaving him out in the cold.  “What are you doing here?” said The Crow.

    He scampered up from where he’d curled close to Strawberries’ feet. “I have nowhere else to go,” he said. “And the THEATRE says HATLEN.”

    But The Crow was not looking at him. Her BEADY eyes were fixed on Strawberries. “I heard you puking in the toilet downstairs. If you’re sick, why aren’t you at home?”

    “I’m not sick,” said Strawberries and her voice was RIGHT AS RAIN but Hatlen could see her hands shaking.

     The Crow looked her up and down. “That’s a matter of opinion, isn’t it?”

    Hatlen eyeballed The Crow. She didn’t like Strawberries because Strawberries’ belly was round with Baby. AN OLD STIFF NECK. That’s what Papa would have called her, and as she marched away, all upside-down mouth and mean, BEADY eyes, Hatlen stuck his tongue out at her.

    Stupid Crow.

    Beside him Strawberries wrapped her arms around her belly like she held a big ball. “I’m not ashamed of you,” she whispered, and then she said something else that made Hatlen’s throat get very tight.

    “And even if I was, the doctor says you won’t be here long enough to be a problem to anyone.”

    Tears almost squeezed out of Hatlen’s eyes and it helped to feel more mad than sad. Whirling, he rushed up the stairs to where The Crow marched.

    And he could not stop himself.

    Hurrying between her and the door, his hands flailed, smacking the top of her head, swipes that went right through her short, pointy hair that looked like nails all pounded in the wrong way. Then—SMACK!

    The Crow yelped and shot backward. “Who did that?”

    Hatlen James did a little jig. “That,” he said, “was me.”

    “You!” she said then.

    Hatlen froze. She could see him?

    “Ray? Rayden!” The Crow’s face was so white Hatlen could see all her veins, blue rivers under her skin. “Get in here!”

    The Clapping Man hurried, Hatlen could hear his feet pelting up the stairs.

    “Take this…this delinquent and do something with him!” said The Crow.

    The Clapping Man cocked his head. “Delinquent?”

    “This kid!” The Crow said, but then she blinked too. “A kid,” she repeated, but softer. Uncertain. ’FRAIDY CAT, Hatlen thought and “Where did he go?” she asked.

    “All my students are backstage,” said The Clapping Man and his face was NO NONSENSE, not the way it usually was at all.

    His face seemed to make The Crow even more FRAIDY CAT, and Hatlen sniggered as she quickly bustled out the school doors.

    The Clapping Man watched till the door behind her squealed shut, then “Well done,” he whispered. Hatlen was confused. Strawberries and the pupils could not hear him if he talked that quietly. “You need to remember to PROJECT YOUR VOICE,” he told him, feeling wise, and as they walked back into the theatre, he tried holding his hand.

    Swipe! Swipe! He could smack the mean Crow but every time he tried to grab The Clapping Man’s fingers he just swiped right through him. His bottom lip jutted out.

    The Clapping Man, shivering, moved down the stairs to where Strawberries was. Hatlen did too, curling up on the floor between them as the Clapping Man tossed a sweater (a new one, one that had SEEN BETTER DAYS) over his head.  “Edie,” Clapping Man said then, eyeballing her. “How sick are you?”

    She kept sewing, not looking at The Clapping Man’s eyes. “I’m not,” she replied.

    “Uh-huh. What about Peanut?”

    Peanut. Clapping Man meant Baby. Hatlen listened very close.

    Strawberries said “I….I don’t know, Ray. I’ve never done this before, remember?” She gave a smile, very bright, and it reminded Hatlen of how Michael John used to smile when Mama said “Did you wash your hands at the water pump, Mister?” Not exactly tell a fib, yet still a fib.

    Clapping Man said “Do you need some time off?”

    “No!” Strawberries eyes became very big, very worried. “If there’s anything I need it’s to stay here with the kids. With the theatre. Ray, sometimes I feel like this old place…well, like it loves us or something. Don’t—don’t you?”

    “The theatre?” The Clapping Man looked all around, a sudden, small smile playing with his face.

    Hatlen watched him with a feeling inside, like holding his breath.

    “Yes,” The Clapping Man answered at last. “I kind of do. But you.” He turned to her, face NO NONSENSE again. “You can stay, but just say the word if you need your feet up. Or hot tea. Or for the kids and I to feed you some grapes.”

    Strawberries giggled, the sound of church bells. Hatlen smiled.

    “And you, Ray,” she said. “If there’s anything else I need it’s absolutely you.”

    The Clapping Man blushed, very red. Strawberries did too.

    And, between them, Hatlen did a little jig.

V

Once the pupils were gone and Strawberries went home (The Clapping Man said he would CALL HER LATER and Hatlen wasn’t sure how yelling for her would be a good thing, yet somehow knew that it was), he followed Clapping Man down the stairs to the cellar, where all the things for the FANCIFUL YARN were stored.

    Clapping Man began to pick up tunics and breeches scattered all over the floor, muttering out noisy sighs as he folded them. “I’m a man too,” he mumbled, tidying breeches and trousers, movements making Hatlen think about Papa, clanking tools into their spots after sometimes quarreling with Mama.

    “I know I’m not the best looking.” The Clapping Man’s face was glum. “But still.”

    Hatlen tilted his head. That wasn’t quite true. The Clapping Man would be quite dapper if he combed his hair sometimes, and didn’t always look like he’d just climbed out of that rag-tag mound of breeches and tunics he folded. Hatlen perched on a crate that said SMALL PROPS, VINTAGE and kept listening.

    “A single mom,” Clapping Man said, and sounded EXASPERATED. “I know shit happens.”

    Hatlen gasped. If Mama was here she’d nab Clapping Man by the arm, march him to the soap flakes by the washboard and make him take a lick for saying a BAD WORD. Michael John had had to do it more than once.

    “Still pretty irresponsible,” The Clapping Man said. “But…I like kids. I could be a good Dad.”

    He would, thought Hatlen. A Dad was the same thing as a Papa, and good Papas made children dance when they played the mouth organ or a box full of music, and good Papas mostly laughed when children were being silly or did not know what to say. Hatlen hopped off the crate and above them the bare bulbs in the ceiling flickered, light fading then yawning brightly, filling the room. The Clapping Man spared them a glance then finished tidying the clothing. “I just need a chance,” he whispered.

    Hatlen sure knew how that felt. Every time he tried to squeeze The Clapping Man’s hand and instead swiped right through him. I JUST NEED A CHANCE, he thought, and as The Clapping Man shut the lights off, ready to go home, he could not help it, he sniffled real big.

    The Clapping Man went very still. “What was that?” He inch-wormed back around.

    “Me!” Hatlen shouted, so loud his ears hurt. “Me, it was me! It was m— “—ee!”

    Hatlen was so shocked that he’d made a sound, he was sure his eyes looked the same as The Clapping Man’s—big as the peets-ahs that had been on the tables. “‘Me’?” Clapping Man echoed and his voice sounded the way Papa’s used to when he looked at a sunrise. “Did someone just say ‘me’?”

    “Yes! Me!” Hatlen hopped up and down, waved his arms. Danced his little jig.

    The Clapping Man stood by the door so long that Hatlen’s legs became too tired to dance. “I have to go,” The Clapping Man announced, PROJECTING HIS VOICE. “But I’ll come back.”

   “No! Stay right now! You can talk to me some more! I will listen. I will jig with you if you turn the music box on!” Hatlen hurried to get in front of the door, but The Clapping Man reached through him, pressed the handle open with a chunk!, then the school was empty and dark as ink.

    Hatlen fled the cellar (BASEMENT, he corrected. Strawberries and The Clapping Man call it the BASEMENT), hating how big and creaky it was. Rushing up the stairs, he was vexed by the sound of his shoes, tap-tap-taping up the treads. Why couldn’t anyone else ever hear them? He grumbled as he reached the doors to HATLEN THEATRE, closed like always. He rushed to go through them.

    But he did not go through them.

    As Hatlen passed into the door his forehead went whap! and struck it. His nose did too. It hurt, and he tried reaching to rub them, but…. “Stuck!” he cried. He had not stayed outside the door. He had not gone through the door. Instead he was in the door, and as he pushed and pushed, he could not move, arms and legs splayed like a starfish he’d seen in one of Michael John’s picture-books. Stuck. And flat like a flapjack. A big-person word scurried into his head and it was: FOREVER. Hatlen James started to cry.

VI

Morning sun coursed through Edie’s window as she filled up her lunch bag. Oranges: Baby. Hard-boiled eggs: Baby. Milk carton: Baby. Two chocolate bars, a pepperoni stick, and three coconut muffins. Edie, Edie, and Edie. She grimaced, half appalled and half enthralled that just looking at the food made her mouth water. “I’ve never ate like this in my life.” She rubbed a hand over the dome of her belly. “I’m going to come out the other side of this fat.”

    Her belly growled. She patted it. Felt nothing. Waited. Still nothing. Her shoulders fell, but then….kick!

    Feeble, a little listless, but still a kick. She exhaled, hand traveling in circles on her belly, wishing. Worrying. Today would be her last ultrasound. “But I don’t want to,” she whispered, the apprehension in her stomach much stronger than that lame little kick. “We’ll go to the theatre instead,” she murmured, and kissed her palm, placed it back on her belly. “Everything’s better at the theatre.”

    And Rayden would be at the theatre.

    Edie felt a blush, deep on her cheeks. She shooed it away. “Most men won’t ever sign up for two of us,” she said briskly, and snitched her lunch kit off the counter. “And that’s right as rain,” she added, then wondered why such an antiquated idiom had struck her. Shaking it off, she hurried out to her car. The kids would already be trickling into the theatre and Ray would have been there for hours. She turned up the radio as she drove. Sang to Baby all the way across town.

    Baby did not kick.

    She parked and climbed out of the car wishing. Worrying. And as she hurried up the stairs to the Red Brick she went still. Had Baby just rolled over? Or was it only her belly, bouncing with the sprint? Wishing, worrying, she burst through the theatre door, palms smacking it open with a—

 

—Whap! Hatlen fell onto the floor like the door coughed him out, and when Strawberries stepped on his shoulder he yowled.

    She shivered. “Morning, Ray!” she called, and paused beside a box hanging on the wall. Hatlen, rubbing his shoulder (she was heavy!), peered to see what she was doing.

    Her fingers moved a little toggle on the box and from the cellar a rumble roared through the floor. Hatlen squeaked and scooted backward on his hind-end, found his spot in the last row. But scary cellar noise or not, he was so happy to be out of that door he felt like dancing his jig.

    “The kids are here,” called The Clapping Man.

    Hooray! thought Hatlen.

    “And they’re dressed,” The Clapping Man added.

    Hatlen blinked. Of course they were dressed. Silly Clapping Man.

    “Ready to be wowed?” he asked Strawberries, then—“Come on out, cast!” he called and Hatlen, like Strawberries, GAWPED at the stage.

    “Oh, my!” Strawberries cried while Hatlen stared. The pupils….the girls were not wearing britches. Instead they wore skirts. And the boys—they wore suspenders. Shirts with long sleeves. Smart flat-caps like…he reached up, touched the brim of his hat.

    ‘Welcome to Oliver Twist!” boomed The Clapping Man.

    Twist? A twist was a candy stick from Maurice & Schwartz on Main Street. Peppermints and rum & butters. Hatlen crept down the stairs, staring at the children who suddenly looked just like him, and as he approached the stage he could feel his face, shining like the hot lanterns sizzling down from above. Oh, but this was a good trick! He began clapping, and jigging, and up on stage Meta flapped her hand, folding it in a way that told him to come up on the stage too.

    Hatlen blinked. Pointed at himself.

    Meta’s head bobbed up and down very fast.

    He bolted up to stand near her.

    “Hello!” she whispered. “Isn’t this exciting?”

   A boy in suspenders gave her the stink-eye. “Shut up, Meta. Quit talking to yourself.”

    Hatlen stuck his tongue out at him—stop acting like Michael John!—then peeked at Meta and nodded.

    “Just stay close to me,” she whispered.

    Hatlen stayed close. And when Meta danced, he danced. And when Meta said words (PROJECTING HER VOICE), he beamed and said words too, pretending that Strawberries and The Clapping Man down in the first row clapped for him as well as all the other children. He STAYED CLOSE to Meta all day, and by the time she and all the pupils started to clomp off the stage, Hatlen yawned just like they did, but he did not rush to his spot in the back row. Instead he sat near Strawberries and The Clapping Man, on the floor just like always, and the way they talked, their voices stopping and starting, sometimes pealing with bell-laughter, it made him remember all the times he’d snuggle beneath his quilt listening to Mama and Papa, body getting warmer and warmer, heavier and heavier, and feathers vaguely poking him through the places on his quilt where the fabric was thin from Mama beating it clean.

    Then—“You’re still not feeling well,” said Clapping Man to Strawberries and Hatlen’s ears perked. “Are you worried?”

    Strawberries was so quiet that around them the building was loud with all its usual soft noises. Then “I skipped my second ultrasound today,” she said.

    “Why?” The Clapping Man’s voice was thin with shock.

    Strawberries shook her head. “I...don’t know. I did end up rebooking it.”

   Hatlen did not know what any of this meant, but he could hear that Strawberries did not sound happy about the ULTRASOUND. He crept close to her. She was perched on the edge of the stage in a way that made her crossed ankles form a U. Hatlen climbed into the U, backside seated on her crossed ankles, rocking as she swung her legs.

    The Clapping Man said “And are you going for this second ultrasound all alone? What about asshat?”

    Hatlen sniggered. Asshat? Sometimes The Clapping Man was so silly. Donkeys didn’t wear hats. But it conjured a picture that made him giggle, especially when he imagined The Crow riding a donkey with a straw boater like Mr. Schwartz from the Grocery on Main Street.

    “Ray.” Strawberries sounded tired. “You know he’s got nothing to do with me anymore. And that I don’t want him to.”

    More quiet. More rocking.

    “Want me to come?” The Clapping Man asked.

    “Yes,” she answered.

    Hatlen’s heart made a little zing!

    “But you can’t and I won’t let you. It’s in the middle of a matinee performance and the kids need you here.”

    Clapping Man shrugged. “I could always ask The Crow to supervise for an hour or so.”

    “The Crow?” Strawberries voice held a frown.

    “Suits her better than Principal King, don’t you think?” The Clapping Man and Strawberries laughed, all church bells, but Hatlen barely listened. Instead he thought this over. How had The Clapping Man known his thinks? He climbed out of the U of Strawberries’ ankles, looked up into The Clapping Man’s face. Papa knew his thinks sometimes too. I want my Papa, he thought, and this time climbed up onto The Clapping Man’s lap, put his head on his chest.

    The Clapping Man became very still and very quiet. Then—“Edie?” he said. “Remember the other day when you asked me if it feels like the theatre loves us?”

    Hatlen peeked, saw her nod.

    “Ever think that maybe it’s not the theatre who loves us, but someone in the theatre?”

    She tilted her head. “Well,” she said slowly. “I have heard voices, remember?”

    “Voice,” said Hatlen. “Just me.”

    “Me too,” said The Clapping Man but Strawberries kept talking like she had not heard him.

    “But I’m not sure that I trust everything I think anymore.” She laughed but her cheeks were all pink. “Lately my head’s conjured the craziest things.”

    The way her quiet voice sounded, it was like she wanted him to think that what she said was JOKES. But Hatlen knew scared when he heard it, he had learned it from listening to Mama when Span Itch In Flew Enza first came to their house, before they got very sick and their faces were hot enough to cook eggs. Before they’d lain in the bed looking at each other, Mama’s fingers gently sweeping the hair from his brow and her eyes full of the same scared he could hear in Strawberries now. He climbed off The Clapping Man’s lap. The Clapping Man should really reach over and hug Strawberries the way he wished someone would have hugged Mama back when she’d been scared like this too.

    But The Clapping Man did not hug. Instead he sat there looking like he didn’t know what to do. Hatlen looked from one to the other. Strawberries’ face had wet stripes, shiny under the bright lanterns, and as she sniffled, Hatlen decided that maybe he should hug her—even if his arms just wound up cutting through her and making her shiver like always.

    But she did not shiver. Instead she jolted and Hatlen did too for—inside! He tried moving forward. Tried moving back. But just like in the door, he was trapped by Strawberries’ tough bones, all shaped like a birdcage from Michael John’s picture book. He covered his ears. It was noisy in this cage—bright and pink and busy, with an important-looking fist-shaped jitter that made a big, echoing sound. Wa-TONK! Wa-TONK! Wa-TONK! Hatlen stared at it, clasping his hands together, feet unsteady just as if he stood on a ball full of water. He looked down.

    Oh! He was on a ball of water! And look! A teensy hand floated below him, barely the size of a silver dollar Papa had once shown him, shiny and new. “Baby!” Hatlen cried and felt the fist-shaped thing above him echo with an even bigger Wa-TONK! He cringed from the noise but peered down. “Hello, Baby! Hello!” He waved, but Baby just floated, eyes screwed tightly shut and little body curled up. Hatlen beamed nonetheless, examining Baby, but then…What’s that? In the water-ball, beside Baby’s arm, there was a tiny, fist-shaped wa-TONK! quivering. Hatlen looked at it, puzzling, then—“Oh, no!” He knew what the wa-TONK! was. A heart. Up above him, the big wa-TONK! was Strawberries’ heart, but this…. “Baby’s heart,” he whispered. But shouldn’t it be inside Baby? Hatlen’s legs started shaking and he thought about what The Clapping Man had said—“Are you worried?”—and how Strawberries had not really answered. Yet Hatlen knew she was worried.

    Now he knew why.

    He curled up, away from the ball of water that held Baby and its quivering, sick little wa-TONK! How was he going to get out of Strawberries’ birdcage bones? He needed to get out, to get away from Baby and from Strawberries, to stop feeling her scared and her sad.

    He had lots of scared and sad of his own.

    He squirmed, ears bursting from the loud echoes of Strawberries’ booming wa-TONK!. Get out. Get away. Go to his spot in the top row at the back and hide his eyes. But how? How had he got out of the door when he’d been a starfish in there?

    Strawberries had smacked it.

   A sudden, shuddery feeling shook where his own wa-TONK! was, and Hatlen spread his arms as far as Strawberries’ birdcage bones would allow, then he brought his hands together, clapped hard.

    “Oh!” Strawberries exclaimed, and Hatlen plopped out onto the floor.

    “You okay?” said The Clapping Man.

    No, thought Hatlen miserably, but “Indigestion” she said, rubbing her chest. “But that didn’t stop me from ordering pizza.”

    Peets-ah? Hatlen’s tongue found the roof of his mouth, covered it protectively.

    “I’m having it delivered to my place—want to come over? Otherwise I’ll inhale it all by myself.”

    Hatlen looked at Clapping Man, hoping very hard he’d say yes. ’Cause tonight he would not feel lonesome when they left. Tonight he wanted them to all go away so he would not have to feel Strawberries’ scared or think about Baby’s awful little wa-TONK! in the wrong place and all wrinkled up like a walnut. He hurried up to his spot so quick that he felt his hat fly off in the aisle. He did not bother to go back. For the first time since he’d come to the theatre, Hatlen James just wanted Strawberries and The Clapping Man to go home.

    “Ray?” From between the two seats before him, Hatlen watched Strawberries snap her fingers in front of The Clapping Man’s face. “Hello?” she said. “Pizza? My place?”

    “Yeah.” Clapping Man’s eyes were glued to the right aisle. “You go ahead. I-uh-I’ll catch up.”

    Strawberries shook her head. “What on earth can you possibly have left to do?”

   The Clapping Man did not answer. Instead he hopped off the stage. Hatlen watched him move up the right aisle and then stoop, pick something up off the floor.

    My cap! Hatlen’s hands flew up, clutched the top of his head.

    “Have you seen this item on the costume inventory?” The Clapping Man held Hatlen’s cap up for Strawberries.

    She shrugged. “One of the kids may have brought it.”

    The Clapping Man did not reply and something about the way he looked made Hatlen feel like holding his breath. “I’ll add it,” he said. “You go on. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”

    Strawberries climbed the stairs heavily like her body was tired, and Hatlen watched her. Goodbye Baby. Tears poked the backs of his eyes and he watched her until the door swallowed the theatre shut again, sealed her out. Then—

    “I know you’re here,” said The Clapping Man.

    Hatlen whipped around. Stared.

    The Clapping Man was PROJECTING HIS VOICE. “I know you’re here and I know you’re lonely.”

    A gasp—and more tears—made Hatlen hide his face.

    “I hear you crying sometimes.”

    Like now? Hatlen peeked between his fingers, watched The Clapping Man.

    “So I brought you this,” The Clapping Man held up an object that made Hatlen’s eyebrows bounce. A teddy bear. And Hatlen recognized its color—gray with white flecks.

    “I had a grandma over at Parkland Lodge make this for you,” The Clapping Man said. “Because you like to pull on my sweater.”

    “Yes.” Hatlen’s head bobbed. “I do.” He looked at the bear. It had glossy black button-eyes and a short, stitched on smile.

    “I’m going to leave it here for you.” The Clapping Man crouched, set the bear on the stage. “Then maybe you won’t be so lonely when I go home.”  He placed Hatlen’s flat-cap beside it.

    Hatlen’s head bobbed up and down very fast.

    “But…” The Clapping Man rose. “I’d take you with me if I could.”

    He would? Hatlen felt his mouth drop open.

    “Then you wouldn’t have to live here all alone. No little kid should ever have to be left all alone.”

   More cry-baby tears leaked out of his eyes so he ducked down, hid his face until he heard The Clapping Man’s feet clop-clop-clop off the stage.

    But then he peeked between the two seats, looked at the sweater-bear. And when he was absolutely sure that The Clapping Man had gone home, he rushed down. Swipe! Swipe! His hands cut right through it, then—Oh, hooray!  He picked the bear up, cuddled it tight to his chest. “Hello!” he laughed, then hurried back to his spot, keeping the sweater-bear close, staring into its happy button eyes all through the dark night. 

VII

In the morning two things surprised Hatlen very much. First, the theatre filled up with more people than he’d ever seen there before. So many that he was chased from his spot in the corner of the last row and had to rush down to the front, right up close to the stage.

    The second thing was that The Clapping Man did not give any directions to the pupils. Strawberries didn’t either. Instead they sat silently in the front row with all the other people in the seats, and on stage the pupils did THE FANCIFUL YARN all by themselves.

    And THE FANCIFUL YARN was splendid!

    Everyone clapped. Lots of folks laughed. And when the pupils all came onstage to bow down, Hatlen jumped up there too, STAYED CLOSE beside Meta, and bent low like everyone else, sweeping his flat cap off all fancy like the other boys on the stage when they bent at the waist. They told the FANCIFUL YARN three times that day, the next day too, and the day after that as well, and what Hatlen learned was that these were PERFORMANCES and that the people in the seats were the AUDIENCE.

    He liked PERFORMING for the AUDIENCE very much and every day he stayed close beside Meta, until one day she sat beside him BACKSTAGE and looked at him with a sad face. “I will miss you,” she said.

    She still could not hear him when he made his voice work so Hatlen fixed his face in a frown.

    “Tonight is our last show.”

    He made more of a frown.

    Meta said “When we’re finished we won’t come back to do a new show for a year.”

    A YEAR? Hatlen knew what a YEAR was. A YEAR was fall when God painted the leaves different colors. Then cold winter came and the dark was much longer than the days. A YEAR meant waiting until ferns and sage finally poked through the snow in the woods, and until calves were born to mama cows and sometimes pink piglets were also in the straw out in the barn. And those piglets and calves…they stayed small a long time. For a YEAR. For FORVER. His mouth hung open and as he stared at Meta, he saw she had crybaby tears on her cheeks.

    Except they weren’t crybaby tears. They were sad tears. His were too. I will “…miss you,” he said aloud but she did not look happy that this time he really spoke. Instead she looked even more sad.

VIII

That night the FANCIFUL YARN went by much faster than Hatlen wanted it to, and before he knew it, it was time to TAKE A BOW.

    Tonight he did not join all the pupils on the stage. Tonight he sat on the floor between the feet of Strawberries and The Clapping Man and thought about A YEAR.

   A year of the theatre empty and all the noises it made when he was there all alone.

    A year with no one jigging or to sit between while they talked, voices like music and laughter like church bells.

    A year with no sweater to tug on, no one laughing with pupils, and no one singing lullabies to make him feel sleepy.

    A YEAR.

    When the pupils finished with their bows, The Clapping Man hopped up onto the stage, and as he started to say THANK YOU to the AUDIENCE, Hatlen knew it was his way of saying ‘Goodbye’. He rushed onto the stage, wrapped his arms around The Clapping Man’s leg. “No!” he cried. “Please don’t go! Please don’t leave me behind for a YEAR!”

    “Hey!” said The Clapping Man, but “Help!” came a cry from the first row.

    “Edie!” The Clapping Man shook free, bolted back down the stairs.

    Strawberries had fallen, and suddenly A YEAR flew right out of Hatlen’s head.

    Strawberries lay there, eyes much too big for her face, and hands clutching her tummy with Baby. “Help me,” she cried and beneath her dress a puddle hurried over the floor, dark and wet. “No!” she cried. “My baby’s too small!”

    Hatlen’s feet worked but they did not know where to go, what to do.

    “Help me,” she whispered and Hatlen also heard The Clapping Man yell “A doctor! An ambulance! Nine-one-one!”

    But Strawberries just said “Help me” and as her large eyes landed on his face they blinked. Looked. “I just want my baby.” Her face was wet with crying. “Help me have my baby.”

    He nodded, head bopping, but—how? How could he help?  How could he fix Baby’s sick little shrunken-walnut wa-TONK? His feet kept shuffling and not knowing which way to go. His hand rose and covered the place where his wa-TONK was, not the same as it used to be, but still in the right place.

    “I want my baby,” Strawberries sobbed and suddenly Hatlen thought of A YEAR. He thought of FOREVER. And he did not know why those scary words came into his head as below him Strawberries’ back arched up in a bow, her belly thrust high in the air. Hatlen squeezed his eyes shut but he could still somehow see Baby sick little wa-TONK. He could still think of his own wa-TONK, beating too fast inside but still right where it should be.

    And still the scary words A YEAR. The scarier FORVER.

    He opened his eyes, stared at Strawberries’ belly. “Help me,” she said. “I want my baby.” Those were the last words Hatlen heard before he rushed.

    And the first thing he heard after was….

    Wa-TONK!

    

    A YEAR

Rayden lifted the baby from the car seat, plopped his little feet onto the cobblestones leading up to the Red Brick School. On the other side of the car, Edie slammed the door shut with a hip, arms full of new costumes to fashion. She joined Rayden on the walk, watched their son toddle over the stones to the stairs at the entrance. “It’s like he knows where to go,” Ray said.

    “He should.” She smiled. “We spend half our lives here.”

    And so far Baby had spent almost all his life here—first in a car seat while Edie kept Rayden company as he’d torn down the set for Oliver Twist. Then just a few weeks ago, Baby had played at the foot of the stage when Edie and Ray had come back to plan out what would be their new fall production. Toddling away up the stairs at one point, Baby had also given Edie a mild heart attack until they discovered him, wedged, yet happily cooing, up in a corner of the back row, a discovered teddy bear clutched beneath one tiny arm. Edie had tried to take it away—“It’s dirty!—but Baby had howled with heartbreak and Ray, wearing the most curious look, had convinced her to compromise. In the end she’d just tossed the bear into the wash, then let Baby have it.

    They’d been inseparable—Baby and bear—ever since.

    And now, as happy noise bubbled out from inside the school, Ray scooped Baby and bear up, opened the door.

    An immediate spill of students burst forward and Edie smiled at Ray, wry. “You know they’re more excited to see him than us, right?”

    Ray grinned as their son patiently endured the crowd of kids ogling him, his chubby little face frequently rewarding them by bursting into big, spontaneous smiles.

    Cutting through crowd was Meta, her newfound authority amongst the kids owing to the knack she’d displayed with Baby—so far the only one he would comfortably let watch him alone and certainly the only one able to convince him to eat the pizza she’d cut into small chunks at lunch break. Flanking Meta was a new student who’d just joined the troupe this year, and Ray and Edie swapped a glance seeing her there, both pleased that gentle Meta had at last found a friend.

    “What’s his name?” The new girl asked, two fingers tenderly sandwiching baby’s pinkie between them.

    “Hatlen,” answered Meta.

    The new student blinked, glancing from Hatlen to the sign over the theatre door. Edie’s face became sheepish. “It just seemed right,” she said. “He was born here.”

    “During a show!” Meta added. “What a finale!”

    Rayden laughed then scooped Hatlen up, out of everyone’s reach. “Even rock stars need reprieve,” he said and the students laughed, some saying “Aww!” as little Hatlen buried his small face in their beloved director’s neck.

    Rayden moved out of their earshot, cuddled his little son. “Baby boy,” he whispered in Hatlen’s small, perfect ear. “You were my baby before you were even my baby.” He kissed the fine feathers of hair on Hatlen’s small head. “And I love you.” He snuggled him, rocked him, then turned his stout little body so Hatlen faced him. “Now say it. Da-da. C’mon. Da-Da-Da-Da—”

    Hatlen’s face burst into one of his big, spontaneous smiles. “Papa!” he said and, silently, “Hello!”